About writing, characters, and how not to make a character be liked

[xparrot]

I've been in a very meta mood lately. And thinking about character love and character hate and the like/dislike in between has illuminated a general writing/storytelling principle for me, one that I think TV shows might ignore or mistake at times, and one that needs close attention paid, because I think writers (professionals as much as amateurs) sometimes confuse it:

"Everybody likes a character" is not a way to make that character be liked by the audience.

The key is - it's not a way to make that character be disliked, either. It's actually an emphasizing storytelling device, reinforcing the feelings the audience already has, but it's often mistaken for a positive or a negative one.

"Everybody likes a character" is a classic trope that takes different forms. I'm thinking of it as when the main theme, the point of the plot, is to show how much a character is liked/loved, by having all the other characters express their love through words or deeds. The damsel in distress is a classic example: the damsel's in trouble, everyone frets and rushes to save her, because they adore her so. Most h/c is some variation on this theme. You sometimes get episodes of a TV show that are "everybody likes a character" eps. In SGA I think Rodney has gotten the most of these - "Tao of Rodney" and "The Shrine" are all about how much everyone loves and appreciates Rodney.

It's not a coincidence that those are two of my favorite episodes of the show. Because Rodney is my favorite character - I enjoy watching the other characters love him as much as I do.

The trick is - and here's where writers get confused - those episodes are not why I love Rodney. I loved Rodney already; those episodes simply reinforced my love for him.

Fans who don't like Rodney do not like those episodes, I've noticed. They get annoyed that Rodney's getting screentime instead of their favorite characters - they also, I believe, get annoyed watching their favorites love a character they don't love. Anytime a favorite character thinks or feels or does something you disagree with, it causes cognitive dissonance. So you tend to either ignore the cause, forget the episode happened; or you find a way to explain it - Sheppard's a good team leader, it's not that he loves Rodney, it's just that he's responsible for him. (While all of us Rodney fans gawk in uncomprehending disbelief at such rationalizing, since one of the reasons we love Sheppard is because he loves Rodney!)

If you're neutral about a character, "everybody likes the char" tends to leave you cold - it doesn't cause that negative dissonance, but it leaves you a bit confused - you aren't that worried for the character, so it's hard to sympathize with the concern of the characters you do like. Additionally, "everybody likes the char" plots often don't show the beloved char themselves in the best light - they're helpless, in need of rescue; they're not being the heroes. It's not a character's best side, usually.

If you already like the character, that's not a problem. When you like a character, you sympathize with them. Helplessness is more a neutral trait than a negative one; unless you already view the character in a negative light, seeing a character helpless probably won't make you like them any less. But it won't make you like them any more, either. So an "everybody likes a character" episode for a character you're neutral about will wind up being uninteresting to you - will be boring. And any character that bores you, you start to dislike.

This is one of the major problem with Mary Sues - Mary Sue stories are one long "everybody loves Mary Sue" romp, and with a dearth of other reasons to like Mary Sue, the audience gets bored, gets resentful of being made bored, and starts to dislike Mary Sue. While as if you like the so-called Mary Sue for some reason or other - because you're the writer and she's you, or the girl of your dreams; because she reminds you of yourself; because she's pretty or funny or whatever - then you'll like the story, and will disagree that the character is a Mary Sue (since part of the definition of Mary Sue these days seems to be that the audience doesn't like them.)

This is also why h/c stories don't often work as well right out of the gate, why intensive h/c is more enjoyable with established characters. Hurt/comfort won't make you like a character, it only reinforces your feelings about a character. You have to like them for some other reason first.
TV screenwriters mix this up sometimes. The reason is because, if a character is liked, "everybody loves the char" episodes will be hugely popular. Rodney has many fans, and most Rodney fans love "everybody loves Rodney" episodes. Rodney's the biggest damsel in distress of the show, and a lot of us love that - but it's not why we love him (rather, it's why we like the show, for catering to our Rodney-love. But the Rodney-love originated somewhere else, I believe.)

But it's easy to mistake the direction of causation. So, realizing that many fans didn't especially like Keller, the SGA writers tried to do "everybody likes Keller" with "The Seed", hoping to work the same magic as with Rodney - except it backfired, because if you don't like a character, "everybody likes that character" will just reinforce your dislike of that character. Those people who do like Keller will enjoy it (well, maybe not "The Seed," because it was a problematic episode on multiple levels) - but it won't do anything to change the mind of fans who don't; it'll just make them feel more negative. "Why does she get all the love? She doesn't deserve it!"

I think this might be why many fans who were fairly neutral about Keller last season are finding themselves disliking her more this season. The "everybody likes Keller" vibe of some of the episodes is grating on us, pushing a mild disinterest/dislike into increasingly negative response. (I wonder if it would've been wiser on the writers' part to flip it around - in "Trio" Keller was liking Rodney more than vice versa, and even Rodney fans who don't like Keller can respond to that - of course she likes Rodney, don't we all! And we all like to see Rodney being liked. Now the storyline is more focused on Rodney's like for Keller than Keller's like for Rodney, and that's not as appealing to the majority of fans.)

(Interestingly, I think there might be an odd corollary, that "everybody hates a character" works the same way, reinforcing the audience in either direction - if you already dislike the character, you'll just dislike them more; but if you like them, even mildly, and you see them being hated on, you'll start to like them more - you'll feel sorry for them, want to defend them; and often you'll start to dislike the characters who are hating on them. Smallville's Lex gained quite a few fans thanks to this perverse principle.)

"Everybody loves a character" is a great plot device (hey, I'm an h/c fan, it's one of my very favorites!) But it has to be used carefully, especially when you're writing a TV show to a broad audience, as opposed to a fanfic targeted to specific fans. For it to be effective, you have to pay attention to the audiences' tastes, and write accordingly.

Comments

[xparrot.livejournal.com]

Heh...I don't actually hate Felix; he just annoys me. Sometimes I can really go for selfish assholes, but there's a certain level of...hmm, it's not flamboyance, exactly, it's more how much they own their assholishness. If they know they're dicks but don't really care that they are, I can adore characters like that (I loved Rodney McKay in SG-1, put it that way ^^) While as Felix is a bit too whiny and self-aware for me; he's too guilty about what he is for me to enjoy him. (I'd probably like Felix a lot more if we never got to see inside his head...)

Anyway, smacking him with a dead fish sounds about right. And yes, some of it is resentment of author manipulation.

There's another factor, too - for me, the bulletproof way to making me like a character isn't to make them be liked *or* disliked by the other chars - it's to make them like the other chars, to care about their friends, and to prove it. I can name the exact scene in NCIS that I started loving Ziva - when she was researching Y. Pestis late at night, genuinely worried about Tony. And I really fell for Rodney in "38 Minutes", when he's watching Sheppard suffer with maximum worried-face, and then at the end refuses to accept praise until he knows John's going to make it.

(Which is why "The Shrine" worked for me as well as "Tao" - "Tao was largely about Rodney saying goodbye, about Rodney acknowledging the people he cared about - they expressed love back, but didn't get much chance to actually prove it. While as "The Shrine" was more about the team proving their love for Rodney; it didn't make me love *Rodney* more, but rather John and Jeannie and Ronon and Teyla.)

I suspect this is why a lot of my h/c stories tend to revolve around sacrifice; I like to have the hurtee do something worthy of receiving comfort first, which usually means vividly proving their love...

[sholio]

I'll be interested to see how you feel about Felix after a couple more books have gone by. I reacted to him very much as I did to Lestat in Anne Rice's books -- just vague annoyance at first, growing into outright hatred for the selfish little nit later on. But I think you liked Lestat, so maybe you'll like Felix too. (Someone must like Felix, other than the author!)

There's another factor, too - for me, the bulletproof way to making me like a character isn't to make them be liked *or* disliked by the other chars - it's to make them like the other chars, to care about their friends, and to prove it.

YES. I started to type "bulletproof kink" but that's a little too narrow, I think; it's not a kink so much as very integral to how I relate to a show, movie or book. I've known this for a long time, and the way that I refined it down in my head is "You want me to love them, make them love each other." Most of my favorite authors are really good at that (and often good at killing them, too. Bastards. XD). This is why I'm not fond of the "lone suffering hero" archetype. I can enjoy it, depending on situation. But what really makes me terrified for a character's survival is knowing that their friends and/or family would be broken up if they died. Loving each other makes me love them, and hurt for them, and fear for them; it's that simple.

... well, okay, it's not actually that simple, because I also have to relate to the characters as individuals. Having one interesting character plus one not-so-interesting character who is important to him/her can make me appreciate the other one, just because my object of fannish affection likes him/her, but if I find neither character in the relationship interesting, then I don't really care about their angst, together or apart. (Elizabeth Bear's "Carnival" was a good example of this. The main characters spent a lot of time angsting about each other, but since I found both of them dull, and so flat and indistinguishable that I had to take mental notes just to remember which was the diplomat and which was the assassin [!!!], I tended to get bored and impatient. This can lead to hoping someone will die to make the angsting stop.)

[xparrot.livejournal.com]

I'm mostly through The Virtu now - and still not hating Felix, but not especially liking him, either. He has been reminding me of Lestat, but Lestat is cooler and less whiny (...at least as I remember, but I read those books when I was 18; my views likely have changed since then...!) In the first book, I rather wanted to see more of Felix before he was damaged; to actually see him being cool and confident, to better appreciate how far he'd fallen. He's so dependent now, and offers little in return...at the very least, Lestat makes peoples' lives more interesting, but Felix doesn't do much but mope! XP

(I also admit that I rarely hate major book characters the way I do TV ones on occasion - mostly because books are shorter, and if I don't like a major character I'm likely to just dislike the book, rather than disliking the character in particular. So Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials, I didn't like pretty much any of the chars, but I just dislike the books, not any specific char ^^;)

YES. I started to type "bulletproof kink" but that's a little too narrow, I think; it's not a kink so much as very integral to how I relate to a show, movie or book.

Yes, yes, exactly! (I think our fictional tastes converge so much because we are both programmed like this, it's just that what pushes that particular button differs a bit between us.) The lone hero doesn't do that much for me, either - heck, right now, I don't really like Harry Dresden all that much - I don't dislike him, but I like his support crew so much more (though I wonder if some of that is PoV - first person books, the character is usually thinking about themselves for most of the story. So it's rare that I like a first person char as much as other chars...)

The main characters spent a lot of time angsting about each other, but since I found both of them dull, and so flat and indistinguishable that I had to take mental notes just to remember which was the diplomat and which was the assassin [!!!], I tended to get bored and impatient. This can lead to hoping someone will die to make the angsting stop.

Yeah, constant angst bugs me. Especially if I don't find the chars interesting/likable to begin with. In those cases I tend to get more involved in the plots anyway. (Really, the caring trick works best if I already like the chars - I have to care about them before I care whether or not they care for/are cared for by anyone else. And what makes me like a character to begin with is a much more complicated question!)

[sholio]

Hee. So I went back and looked for my emails; here's what I wrote to Naye after finishing "The Virtu":

I've ordered the third book, but haven't gotten it yet -- which is probably good; I think it's going to be a while before I read it, because I currently hate Felix with the passion of a thousand burning suns, and I think I need to decompress for a while and get less emotionally involved so that I can read it without going DIE FELIX DIE DIE DIE during all his POV parts, which is what I was doing through approximately the second half of The Virtu.

... yeah, I think I was getting a little emotionally involved. XD I ... think I might take my fiction a little too seriously. (Also, I think I've mentioned in the past that soulbonding is a big squick for me. These books provide a generous helping of squick with a side of incest and mind-rape! Which is not to say that I hate the books; I don't. I still haven't decided if I'm getting the next one, though, because they're kind of like "Lost" for me -- there are parts of them I really love, and parts that make me feel horrible, and I can't quite decide whether the balance tilts, on the whole, towards the positive or negative side.)

If you're interested, here's the review I mentioned: http://sarahtales.livejournal.com/91426.html. I just re-read it for giggling purposes; she doesn't like Felix very much, but at least she has solid (and entertaining) reasons for it. I didn't notice anything in her review that was blatantly spoilery for the last parts of Virtu, but you still might want to wait until you finish reading it first ...

The lone hero doesn't do that much for me, either - heck, right now, I don't really like Harry Dresden all that much - I don't dislike him, but I like his support crew so much more.

Hmm, and see, for me, Harry didn't do much for me in the first couple of books either, but once his little band of supporters started forming, I began to fall really, really hard for him. Harry happens to hit one of my fan-buttons really hard -- it's a little difficult to describe exactly, but I love characters who are able to give as much as he does, while not realizing that they're that kind of person ... does that make any sense? The fact that there's such an incredibly heroic person under the scruffy, snarky, ne'er-do-well surface, and that both sides are equally part of him; that is, he doesn't pretend to be a sarcastic jerk to cover up the heroic side -- that's who he thinks he is, but there's also this part of him that would do the right thing no matter what it costs him ... and top that off with all of his abandonment issues -- oh yeah, I'm a complete sucker for Harry. :D

... er, sorry, where was I? XD

But I also know that I woudn't like him nearly as much without his close-knit bond with his friends and family -- I know because I didn't like him as much, even though his character traits that are most appealing to me were on display in the first few books. And the supporting cast are marvelous; it wouldn't be as much fun if I didn't like them as much as I do, but I don't know if I'd be interested in the solo adventures of any one of them without having the bond with Harry also. I wibble when they're in danger because of what it'd do to Harry if any of them died, but also with the added plus that I really like all of them as individuals and don't want to lose any of them. And Butcher kills characters just often enough that I'm on the edge of my seat during the fight scenes because I'm never quite positive that all of my favorites are going to live ...

Really, the caring trick works best if I already like the chars - I have to care about them before I care whether or not they care for/are cared for by anyone else.

It seems to go hand-in-hand for me; they develop together. I'm not sure what it is that makes me love some characters more than others, but I've noticed my feelings being pushed from apathy into character-love by watching them grow close to each other and sacrifice for each other, so I know that it can go that way for me.

[xparrot.livejournal.com]

Ahhh, sarahtales! That's why Gnine started reading the Melusine books, she's got Sarah friended, and is constantly reading me excerpts from her posts (I should just friend her myself, she sounds like a marvelous read.) I'll wait to read the review 'til I'm done, should finish it at work tomorrow.

Ahh, while as I like soul-bonding if it's got serious ramifications, so that's one aspect of the books I am enjoying! (...I blame that on being exposed to Dragonriders of Pern at an early age XP) And incest (sibling incest, anyway) doesn't squick me anymore - it's not a kink, and I can only see it with certain chars, but it doesn't bother me. Ummm, fandom, what have you done to me!? ^^;

I don't tend to get as involved with books, at least not now - I used to, but now it's more infrequent. I think it's because I engage with fiction somewhat differently than I used to - it's my Type-A vs Type-B fandom thing, books pretty much can only be Type-A for me, because I don't want to fic for them. But for something to be Type-A it has to be...hmm, perfect, in its way; exactly what I'm looking for. Dresden Files actually is - it's not that they're the best books in the world, but for what they are, I wouldn't want them any different. While as the Melusine books, there are things I want different, and while with a TV show that would move me into ficcing, with a book it means I don't engage. ...If that makes any sense!

it's a little difficult to describe exactly, but I love characters who are able to give as much as he does, while not realizing that they're that kind of person ... does that make any sense?

Now that does make sense, and it's something I like myself. I think I'm a little confused about Harry, really - it's not that I dislike him in the slightest; I really do like him. It's just that he's not quite as interesting to me as some of the others...

Which, thinking it over, I suspect is because of the POV more than anything else. Harry's an open book to the audience - literally, since he's the narrator! I don't wonder about what's going on in his head. And I tend to be more fascinated by characters who I don't entirely understand.

But I do still like him - and I like his relationships especially; just as you say, I wouldn't care about any of the other characters nearly as much on their own without their relationship to Harry (Thomas especially - he's probably my favorite char in the series, but he's my favorite char specifically as Harry's loyal brother. What's interesting about the 1st person POV is that every scene I get with Thomas, it's automatically, by default, in relation to Harry. I don't know if I really like Thomas apart from Harry, because we never see him that way! (except in the little novella, which was fun, but Harry was still central, so...))

[sholio]

Hmm ... I really don't relate to books any differently than to TV (or manga or comics); I think the only difference with books is that, like movies, they tend to be shorter, so it's a rare book that can really engage my fan-heart without being part of a fairly long series. (Locke Lamora has done a remarkable job of getting me invested after only two books, though! And there are others.) I don't write much fic for books because I feel guilty for it, though; I tend to feel like I'm toe-stepping. It took me awhile to figure out why I feel this way, but I think it has something to do with books being single-creator creations, and also something to do with fanfic being in the same medium as books themselves (as opposed to ficcing for a TV show or anime, where it's very clearly an adaptive sort of thing and not a recreation of the same thing the book is doing). On an emotional level, though, I engage in much the same way.

What you say about Harry being an open book does make sense to me. I tend to have a history of getting more involved with secondary characters than with main characters for, I suspect, similar reasons. But ... I don't know, I do make exceptions, and Harry is just so very -- Harry. *hugs him*

Thomas ... you know, I really didn't like Thomas in the first book in which he appeared. When the Thomas=Harry's brother bombshell was first dropped, I was kind of bummed out -- it's the same feeling as when a character that you like falls for someone that you really don't like. But Thomas has pretty much won me over. It's hard to go on not liking him when he's so adorably devoted to Harry. :D

[xparrot.livejournal.com]

Hmmm, now I'm pondering the book-engagement question. Because I used to fan on books the same way I do TV shows, but not anymore, or at least not often...though I do fan on manga sometimes.

Some of it might be that I've written so much now myself, that novels have, hmm...not lost their magic exactly, but I understand how they work much better than I used to. When I read a book, a lot of times I'm considering the writer's style, watching what tricks they're pulling. It puts me at an extra distance from the story; it takes more to pull me in, because I'm not looking at the characters, but the writing; I'm seeing the writer, imagining what I would be doing, writing this book. (I think this might be some of what is happening, because books that are very different from something I'd write myself pull me in faster. The Locke Lamora books have that intense, unexpected humor and suspense from the very beginning, and I fell in love fast...though still, different from my usual fanning love, else I would've been so heartbroken when everyone died that I would've stopped reading ^^;)

Makes me wonder, if ever I could write for TV...would it maybe dampen the magic of that for me, too?

Though with TV shows, a lot of them, I do know about production, and am becoming more conscious of it - but once I fall for characters, none of that matters. So I wonder if it is what you say, a matter of length more than anything - I need more time to fall in love than I used to. And it is true, I rarely read book series that are long enough for me to really get invested (especially since I have little patience for a lot of epic fantasy)...actually, most of the books that I have recently engaged with fannishly are long series - Dresden Files, and then there were the Elvis Cole detective novels (you might like those, if you haven't tried them...)

Heee, I'm not surprised you didn't like Thomas at first...you seem to have a kind of automatic rejection of "fangirl bait" chars, until they prove themselves.

[xparrot.livejournal.com]

Also, I just read Sarah's reviews of Melusine & The Virtu, and YES, that is exactly the problem with Felix, he's weirdly flat, all tell and no show. Her telling is very pretty, but no, we're told he's super-charisma-man, but we never see it; I don't really believe that all these people would adore him in spite of himself. (While as Lestat, I believed it.)

Have started on the 3rd book, and thus far finding it enjoyable. There's a new narrator char, the main chick of The Virtu, and I like her voice. But they haven't caught me the way Locke did.